Tony all but held his breath. He’d meant what he’d said.He’d given up shoving his scars in people’s faces a long timeago. Even so, he suddenly wasn’t sure. He didn’t want tohurt her. He didn’t want to incite any regrets where they hadno business.
He didn’t want to take the chance that she would turnaway from him.
“You’ve seen my stretch marks,” she protested.
He lifted off his shirt.
He closed his eyes.
“My God,” she breathed, and Tony fought the urge to turn away. But then she chuckled, a low, earthy sound ofdelight, and he had to open his eyes.
There was laughter in hers. Delight, a slow, trenchantlight of arousal. There was something deeper, as well,something Tony knew would return to haunt him later, butfor now he chose to ignore it, just as she did.
‘‘You do have a great chest,” she admonished, splayingher hand right across the scar that bisected it like an arrow.“I thought so.”
“So do you,” he assured her, rather than telling her whathe wanted to. That if he hadn’t fallen in love with her before, he would have then.
Her hair was fanned across the pillow like a sunrise, hereyes glowing and her lips bruised from his attention. Tonyhad never wanted a woman more. He had never felt sopowerless, so overwhelmed by the gift he’d been given, evenfor this moment.
And so he returned that gift to her in the only way heknew. With his mouth and his hands and his words, there onthat little cot where the candle flickered and the moonlightslipped fitfully through the clouds and the only sounds werethe sighs and whispers and small, surprised cries of delightand discovery.
He captured her, caressed her, courted her, until shearched and whimpered beneath him, her own hands desperate and clever in their command of him. Heatedly, he teased her nipples to attention and laved her breasts. Hemeasured her arms and skimmed her legs and dipped his fingers into her to find her hot and wet and waiting.
And when she shuddered, her eyes opening in surprise, her hands reaching out blindly, her whimpers growing topleas, he slid a hand along her thigh to ask entrance, and shegave it. And Tony, who had been alone a long time, slippedinto her and found himself home.
It was a mistake. It was a mistake. Claire knew it, knewthat sanity waited out there for her somewhere. Reality.Action and consequence. Sin and penance. She had nobusiness lying in bed with this man.
For these brief moments when she was warm in his armsand her hand was splayed across the broad plane of hischest, though, she didn’t care. Tony had given her a perfectday. From beginning to end, laughter, excitement, adventure. Delight. He had pulled her away from the past, at leastfor these few hours, and let her enjoy the perfect present.
For the rest of her life, she would be grateful.
For this moment, she was quiet. Purged of her emotions,swept clean of dreams by the song in one man’s arms. Forthese few minutes in the middle of a rainy night, she washappy.
For this perfect present, she was in love.
“Now your son’s going to have to beat me up,” Tonymused as he fingered her hair.
Claire smiled and closed her eyes, soaking in the feel of him, the smell of him, the sound of him entwined with heras if they had always belonged here. “He’s got to getthrough me to get to you.”
“Want to go an another picnic tomorrow?”
She laughed and thought how delicious it felt, how fragile.
“It’s been a long time,” she admitted softly.
He kept playing with her hair, sending delightful chillsdown her neck. “Since you’ve gone on a picnic?”
“Yep. Not many picnics on my social calendar in the lastfew years.”
“Me, either. I guess it was just a lot easier to concentrateon the business after Gina’s mother left, ya know?”
“Oh, yeah,” she admitted. “I know. A lot less trouble forthe money.”
That elicited a companionable chuckle. “Not to mentionthe fact that you don’t have to take it out to dinner and amovie first.”
She punched him in the chest for that one. “Neanderthal.”
“I was kidding.”
